While the rest of the nation went red in Tuesday's midterm elections, California emerged even bluer. What's going on?

The standard answer is that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans, and that many decline-to-state voters lean Democratic.

But there's a more telling reason, one that promises to keep California blue for years. The state's rising numbers of new voters - newly minted immigrant voters, minorities and voters between the ages of 18 and 29 - are overwhelmingly Democratic in their preferences.

While California has not been majority white for more than a decade, its voting population has been slower to change, reflecting the time lag needed for immigrants to become citizens and register to vote, and for their children to grow to adulthood. Today, one-third of registered voters are minorities, 19 percent of whom are Latinos. Asian Americans represent 7 percent, with African Americans at 6 percent.

These voters supported Democrats in statewide races by double-digit margins, according to exit polls. Voters under 30 years old favored Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman by a whopping 27 points.

If any Republican statewide candidate had a good chance of making inroads with these new voters, it was Whitman - a political moderate with tens of millions of dollars to burn on advertising. But the state's immigration politics tripped her up, in large part because her opposition to providing a citizenship pathway for illegal immigrants was out of sync with voters' attitudes toward immigration.

In the most recent USC College/Los Angeles Times poll, 1,501 registered voters in California were asked what they think should happen to illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years

Sixty-one percent said they supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; only 28 percent would deport them.

Democrats and minority voters were most supportive. About 56 percent of white voters backed the idea of a pathway. Republicans were evenly split on the question. Young voters of all racial and ethnic backgrounds heavily backed the citizenship route (75 percent), with only 17 percent favoring deportation.

While not the most important issue in the governor's race, immigration policy took on enhanced significance for Whitman when it was revealed that she had for years employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. Whitman's handling of the matter fostered the feeling among many minority voters that she was anti-immigrant, a feeling made palpable because of her party's staunch support of Proposition 187 in 1994.

Since then, the state's voters have come from overwhelmingly backing a ballot measure to prohibit government services for illegal immigrants to supporting a path to citizenship for them.

Part of this shift in attitudes is due to the changing demographics and the growing share of Latino and Asian American voters in the electorate. But white voters are now joining minority voters in supporting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

If Republicans want to win statewide office again, their politics will have to acknowledge this new reality in California.